Log Entry: Wednesday, May 19th, 1999

Baker Inlet to Prince Rupert: 39 nm

This time, coming out of Watts Narrows, Jane took some film footage of me at the wheel: I looked very focused, as the boat was turning through 80-degree arcs in the channel!

We had the currents and winds with us this time on Grenville Channel, and we surged up and out into the Malacca Passage, and then Chatham Sound, where we got in a short sail.

The city (or at least the part we saw) is spread out along a long straight oceanfront. As we approached, we contacted the Prince Rupert Yacht Club on channel 73, and were told that there was lots of room. We immediately heard two other boats make the same request: the second one was a 120-foot motor yacht, arriving without prior notice! After his request, the radio went silent for a few minutes: one could sense that there was no longer lots of room. When the harbourmaster came back on, he asked us all to re-confirm. We did. By this time, we were right outside the yacht club, and we received final instructions for docking.

The Prince Rupert Yacht Club is located in a section of Rupert (as the locals call it) called Cow Bay. Cow Bay is proud of their name: there are endless, countless, innumerable, unbelievably many cow signs, cow paintings, cow sculptures, porcelain cows, garbage cans painted like cows, cow souvenirs, cow this, cow that, cows done in more ways than even cows could dream of. It’s charming, in its way.

It rained the whole time we were in Prince Rupert.

Today, we did a quick tour of the town, checked out the Safeway, the computer store, the marine store. By then it was 6, and most places were shut.